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The news of Mitt Romney’s remarks at a closed-door fundraiser that were leaked by Mother Jones has been dominating since it broke yesterday. The scandalous content appears plentiful enough to keep pundits and political junkies glued to Twitter for the remainder of the cycle. And let’s be clear: between Romney’s callous “wait-and see” approach to the Middle East peace process, his instrumental view of Latino voters and his parasitic characterization of those who are too poor to pay income tax, he painted a devastating picture of himself as a leader and a person.

The line from the video that is the source of the most fascination is when Romney claims that he cares not at all for the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes and freeload off the government, since they are sure to be Obama voters anyway. The statement is a window into the cynical and meanspirited worldview that would guide this candidate’s policies and priorities were he to win in November. This alone should give every voter pause, regardless of partisan affiliation.

But there’s a reason right-wing blogger and CNN contributor Erick Erickson’s first tweet after seeing the leaked tapes expressed joy:

Dammit!I’m just now seeing these Romney secret videos. We need that guy on the campaign trail!

A year ago this week, a small band of committed activists achieved a goal that had eluded the established political organizations and the progressive nonprofit sector: they successfully shifted the national conversation away from one about cuts and austerity to one about our nation’s yawning economic inequality. “The 99 percent versus the 1 percent” became the rallying cry for an reinvigorated movement, and Occupy Wall Street ushered in a new era where political fantasy gave way to economic reality in shaping the public discourse.

While the glory days of Occupy faded with winter, the movement left an indelible imprint on our collective consciousness: despite partisan claims to the contrary, most residents in this country have far more in common than we have that drives us apart.

(A big shout out to those committed activists who retook Zuccotti Park for the anniversary of Occupy. For more on this, see Nationreporting here.)

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Panicked by the need to respond to the growing sense of outrage about a rigged system built by some of their architects, right-wing leaders cast about for a way to change the conversation back to their own advantage. It was this desire that drove Erick Erickson to start the “53 percent movement.” In launching his campaign, Erickson called the protesters “whiners,” and sought a new social division—one that pitted the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income taxes against those he claimed were “free-loading” activists. Despite his entreaties and the cheerleading of the right-wing echo chamber, their manufactured meme could not compete with the much more resonant, organic and accurate 99 percent rallying cry.

Still, the mathematical and rhetorical trick has remained in the back pocket of a GOP desperate to change the subject back to their hobbyhorse of the deficit. They see their opportunity in the resurrection of the 47 percent argument, despite how the moment presented itself.

There is now, as there was then, much to take issue with in the 47 percent statistic. Those 47 percent of Americans live below the poverty or are unemployed or are elderly, many of whom have paid taxes their entire life. Those 47 percent also almost certainly pay some form of taxes: be it payroll taxes, income taxes, state taxes, property tax or sales tax. And there is emerging an even more in-the-weeds debate about whether or not these 47 percent are actually more likely to vote for Romney or Obama, an answer we’ll never find because it’s different depending on how you count. It is tempting to jump on these arguments—passionate as we all are for getting the ever-dwindling facts out to our fellow Americans.

But doing so will cede the home field advantage to the GOP. This certainty accounts for Stuart Varney’s crowing that it’s about time we get back to talking about how “half of the population is living off of the other half” during Fox and Friends’s morning coverage of the tapes. It is the same reason that Brian Kilmeade on the same network stated unequivocally that Romney should be stumping on this issue all the time. If we’re spending time talking about what half the population does or does not get or do, we inevitably draw attention away from the fact that the GOP is running a candidate whose entire life experience and political vision is shaped by being part of the top tiny fraction of this country’s wealth at a time where most Americans are struggling to get by.

So, while the campaign can’t be happy about the GOP-patented guerrilla tactics now coming back to bite one of their own, early pronouncements that the election was won last night are premature and irresponsible. If Romney’s camp can weather this storm and find themselves washed up on the beaches of the 47 percent versus the 99 percent, they might have chance of not getting voted off the Island. This election—and more important, the fight for economic opportunity—remains about the genuine struggles and solutions that benefit all but the most privileged in this country. Romney’s dismissal of half of those folks doesn’t change that fact.

Ilyse HogueTwitterIlyse Hogue, a social change practitioner, media consumer and analyst, and online engagement expert, is the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. Previously, she served as Co-Director of Friends of Democracy, a 2012 initiative to build political power around the issue of money in politics and as Senior Adviser to Media Matters for America where she focused on advocacy programs to undercut the power of right-wing media. From 2006- 2011, Ilyse was Director of Political Advocacy and Communications for MoveOn.org. In her over five years at MoveOn, she was responsible for shaping political strategy and developing communications initiatives to give MoveOn's five million members a voice in Washington. An expert in both electoral and advocacy campaigns, she has mobilized MoveOn members and worked closely with leaders in Congress and the White House to advocate for progressive legislation on financial regulatory reform and health care. In these capacities, she has served as a spokesperson to the media, frequently analyzing breaking news on both televisions and in print.
Prior to joining MoveOn, Ilyse was Program Director at the Rainforest Action Network, where she spent six years pioneering and implementing corporate advocacy campaigns in the banking, forest, and other sectors. She was the recipient of the Business Ethics Network award in 2005 for her work in the financial sector, a campaign that was ultimately instrumental in moving over 60 multinational banks to adopt a groundbreaking framework of environmental standards for private investment known as the Equator Principles. These principles led to a host of voluntary initiatives in the US banking sector, including from Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. Ilyse was the chief negotiator in each of those agreements and worked to market them to a spectrum of constituencies, from institutional investors to environmental NGOs. A Harvard Business School case study was written in 2005 about this work, and she has lectured on it at Yale and Columbia. She has been a frequent speaker and writer about corporate power, corporate accountability and multi-national institutions that govern financial and corporate behavior. Ilyse was very involved in the global justice movement, traveling from Seattle to South Africa and many places in between working with international allies on corporate power.
She is the co-founder of smartMeme Strategy and Training project which works to amplify the impact of grassroots organizing with new strategy and training resources, values based communications, collaborations, and meme campaigning. Ilyse serves on the board of Rebuild the Dream, Oil Change International, Story of Stuff, and National Domestic Worker's Alliance. Ilyse holds an M.S. in Resource Ecology Management from the University of Michigan where she studied the impact of resource constraints in politics and culture. Her BA is from Vassar College.